Moscow Winter Air
by mattmetzger
Summary: Jim wakes alone, but is quick to reel Spock back from the window. Merely some short fluff. Established K/S relationship.


**Notes: Established K/S relationship.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

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Jim slid out of sleep in the laziest fashion possible. He drifted up through the layers of consciousness, brushing them aside only after careful examination, and emerged, sleepy and content, in the deep warmth and soft layers of a bed he doesn't know.

The ridiculously deep-but-soft mattress, that tried to merge with your spine and break your hips through prolonged sleep, reminded him where they were, and he smiled without even bothering to open his eyes. Shore leave, near enough to Christmas to count, and they were in Moscow. A scientific conference had been going down, and everyone remotely of a scientific bent had been talking about it. Then Chekov had decided that you hadn't lived until you'd seen Russia, and voila.

Most of the whole damn crew were somewhere in the city, and for most of January. What timing.

At that, Jim stirred a little, and realised that he alone was heating the bed. He reached out, in both directions, but found nobody, and cracked open an eye to the dimness of the hotel room. The curtains were open, and a dark figure stood in the light, watching the sun rising over the glittering cityscape.

"Sp'ck?" Jim croaked, sitting up under the blankets. They were so many, so large and so heavy that, despite sitting up fully, only part of his back was exposed to the chill air, and he realised vaguely that the Moscow winter had permeated the building enough to make being out of the bed unpleasant.

The figure turned, and Jim frowned. That stern countenance was back in full force, and his motion stiff, and Jim was crawling from the bed and reaching out before he had the chance to really analyse it.

"What's the matter?" he asked, wrapping himself around the alien man as though he belonged there. After two and a half years, he supposed that he did.

"It is of little importance, Jim. I apologise for waking you."

"S'important if it's got you awake at this hour," Jim corrected, rubbing circles into chilled skin. "What happened? Couldn't sleep? Nightmare?" He took in the tension around Spock's mouth and added, "Pain?"

An experiment had gone badly wrong some four days earlier and had exploded in one of the research labs. There hadn't been any fatalities, but there had been large amounts of highly acidic chemicals liberally sprayed all over the place. Two of the research scientists would never work in space, the chemical burns to the eyes permanently blinding them. One ensign would recover, but only after six months of skin grafts to her face. Luckily, most of the personnel in the room had gotten moderate chemical burns to non-crucial areas.

But for a Vulcan, the hands were a lot more sensitive than for a human. So while the burns to Spock's left hand hadn't been severe or caused any real permanent damage, they were going to hurt like hell until they could be fully healed. Which, even with modern medicine, took a week or so.

"It is...manageable."

"Which means it hurts," Jim translated. "Did it wake you up?"

"I was...unsettled."

_Nightmare_, Jim's head translated, but he didn't say it, instead going to the medical kit that Bones had given him - for just these situations - and rummaging for painkillers. He pressed the hypospray into the shadowed contours of Spock's neck, and followed it with an apologetic kiss, even though Spock (the bastard) didn't seem as bothered by the sprays as Jim. (Wasn't fair. Totally wasn't fair.)

"Come back to bed," Jim urged, tugging even though all his physical strength wouldn't get Spock moving if he didn't want to go. But the chill of his skin was worrying, and the air unpleasantly cold even to Jim, so he persisted until Spock gave in and moved back towards the bed.

Jim buried them in the blankets again, the density of the cloth and the residual warmth from Jim's body ridding them both of the fine tremors that had begun, and the human curled around the Vulcan again as if it would be detrimental to his health to let go.

"What did you dream about?"

"I cannot remember," Spock said, his voice a low rumble in the gloom, "but it left me...unsettled when I woke."

"Think you can sleep again?"

"I am uncertain."

He was still vaguely unsettled, Jim realised, and he tightened his grip in a gentle hug. "Okay. Just lie with me in the warm, then, even if you can't go back to sleep. Bones'll kill me if you get sick on top of the burns."

He squeezed the wrist above Spock's injured hand, the bandages (and the hand itself) hidden in the sheets, and the skin returning to its normal temperature. Spock's other hand, previously drifting somewhere at Jim's waist, stroked its long fingers over his hip in response, and up the ladder of his ribs to his shoulder before settling again.

"Are we going anywhere later?" he murmured, shuffling until his face was buried in Spock's neck, and the blankets hoisted up over both their heads.

"Negative," came the reply in the dark, and Jim smiled.

A man smiling in the dark can still be felt - through touch and sense and telepathy - and he felt the answering twitch of the lips as much as if he'd seen them. He did not challenge the display - invisible or not - though, settling himself over and around his Vulcan like another blanket, to keep out the metaphorical darkness, if not the literal darkness, and to keep them both warm.

"Love you," he breathed, lighter than Moscow winter air, through the minute spaces between them.

The fingers fluttered at his shoulder, and all went still again.


End file.
